Flammable Sunshine

I feel as if I'm just wasting time until my life gets better. My dreams are all stymied, put on hold due to current circumstances. I occupy my days with meaningless activity, waiting for the phone to ring, checking my email every few minutes. I can't sleep, because I worry that I might miss an opportunity while I dream.

I'm waiting for something to change. Instead, everything drifts slowly back to the barely tolerable situation I had a year ago.

I really want to be having face-to-face social contact, interaction with another adult, preferably with like interests. My friends are busy with school, relationships, or work, and have no time to spend with me. Instead, I send emails to strangers and receive few responses. I have given my number to a dozen people and am still waiting for my phone to ring. Is it broken? Nope, just checked, still have four bars.

I want to walk in my garden. I want to prepare the soil for planting. I must wait, for the recent snow and rain flooded my property, and my garden is still underwater.

I want to build myself a yurt, a place to myself, where I can have silence and privacy. I must wait, for I don't have a vehicle to bring the materials home with, and my friends are all busy.

So I sit, burning daylight, killing time, waiting for change.

And now for something completely different.

I was speaking with my best friend about my recent relationship catastrophe, and she said, "You need to pick a man that's entirely different from the men you usually choose."

To which I replied, "I see your point, but brainless, handsome, rich men don't turn me on."

I really am weird.

The garden of my mind is a verdant jungle, teeming with variety.

The ordinarily productive garden of my mind is overgrown with weeds. I used to count on a regular harvest of ideas and thoughts, but my crops have been overrun. Ideas I don't remember planting have sprung unwanted from the neglected crevices of my mind, and are competing with the useful theories.

Depression and loneliness have twined themselves among nearly every thought, giving a bitter taste to everything I once enjoyed.

Could I use meditation as a way to weed out the unwanted thoughts in my mind? Could mantras become a mental weed-whacker obliterating the negativity that chokes out the happier produce I desire?

Could I stretch this metaphor any further before it breaks? Or did I already take it far past the breaking point?

Drowning.

When it rains, it pours, right? The rain hasn't stopped yet. The deluge continues, the floodwaters have risen, and I have been treading water for too long. One by one, all the people I care for pull away. Some are struggling with their own tragedies. Some have already slipped beneath the waves. The others? Perhaps they fear that I will drown them in my own panic to stay afloat.

My strength ebbs, and I am in desperate need of a lifeboat.